From the Department of Counterintuitive Thinking:
The debate about climate change needs to become more political, and less scientific.
That is from climate researcher Mike Hulme, in a provocative essay at The Conversation. The above quote makes more sense when you read the sentence that follows:
Articulating radically different policy options in response to the risks posed by climate change is a good way of reinvigorating democratic politics.
I'm all for this, but you can only have a robust debate about potential solutions if enough people feel strongly that there is a globally significant threat worth discussing and acting on. But the nature of the climate problem--its complexity and timescale--make it hard for us to wrap our minds around. For a recent explanation on why that is, read this piece by Bryan Walsh in Time, headlined:
Why we don't care about saving our grandchildren from climate change
The biggest stumbling ...
